Funny how that chart tails off during Clinton and spikes up hard during Bush II. I wonder how much is DHS? Rahm isn't the first one to not let a crisis go to waste.

What the...

Its Obamageddon - the country will come to halt !! ... or not.

marque2

Notice too that most of the spike in the Bush years occurred when the Dems took over congress and the senate. early Bush years don't look so bad actually.

Also notice how it started going up under Clinton until the GOP took over the house.

Jtsulli

It looks like the upward trend starts back up in 1996, still four years before junior took over for Clinton. The big spike upwards, as marque2 notes, is in 2006 when the democrats returned to control of congress.

norse

Spot on. That said - dear readers and commenters, this is not a D vs R issue. This is a Washington vs the People issue. Government spending needs to come down around 30% at least, and neither of the parties is the least bit interested in seeing that happen. Please work hard to vote anyone currently holding Office out of it and replace them with someone who has at least a bit of common sense.

Pet peeve: The Senate is part of congress, the other body is the House of Representatives the term Congress refers to both together. I also hate it when the media refers to Senators and Congressmen. Senators ARE Congressmen. The correct phrase would be Senators and Representatives.

The scary thing about it?
It wasn't until this last week that conservatives figured out that they were being lied to...and some conservatives still haven't figured it out.
In short, many, if not most conservatives were running in circles screaming and shouting that sequestration was going to end the world.
Conservatives were buying into -and spreading- the Dem and MSM propaganda. ...but, we hate Dems and the MSM and we know that they always lie to us.
Yeah. We're the smart ones in the room.

marque2

I would be happy if the government just froze spending to pop increase + inflation. That would be 2.75% this year - vs 7% without sequester and 4.8% with. My understanding is if we did this then the deficit would be around zero in must 7 years.